


shooting stars (i could really use a wish)

by koganewest



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Burns, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Fire, Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Orphan Keith (Voltron), Pyrophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-28 23:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16732857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koganewest/pseuds/koganewest
Summary: “Where’d you get those?”Keith stares in horror at his bare forearm, where his sleeve has ridden up to reveal the angry burn marks. His teacher and current tutor, Mrs. Lantiff, is waiting for him to look up, an indecipherable expression on her face. Precarious silence echoes in the empty library as he gazes up at her, cautionary and guarded. Keith had expected anger or pity, two reactions with which he was well acquainted, but she just seemed to be curious – and without forcefully prying.Keith appreciates it. So he’s honest.





	shooting stars (i could really use a wish)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CharacterCorner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharacterCorner/gifts).



> prompt: Keith is put into an orphanage after his father's death. The other kids there bully him and find that he's deadly afraid of fire. They tease him for it and some of the kids burn him. He never tells nor does he try to fight back since he's scared. Eventually, someone finds out about the burns and helps him care for them when he's burned. The person will try their best to have Keith over frequently so as to limit his time in the orphanage.(Idk how to end it but yeah...)(Hope you like it??? :))

Keith didn’t cry at the funeral. 

In truth, he hadn’t really understood what was happening at the time, and though he understood the concept of death, he couldn’t process that his father was truly gone. He didn’t feel the gravity of the situation when it occurred, instead just felt overwhelming numbness.

So, instead of crying, he stared blankly at the coffin in front of him. 

Everyone around him seemed confused by his lack of emotion, frightened by his apathetic reaction, but Keith just ignored it. He ignored everything until he arrived at the burial and his father was being lowered into the ground. When someone prompted him to throw dirt at the coffin in the earth, Keith did so without a word. 

He followed the crowd of unrecognizable people away from the burial site. Left behind was the lone headstone. It reads their last name. And nothing more.

* * *

It barely takes three months of living at the group home for Keith’s fear of fire to be discovered. 

The first incident occurs in the dead of night, when Keith wakes up screaming “help” and “fire”. Naturally, the adults at the home urgently try to placate Keith, but the terrified wideness of his eyes doesn’t disappear for days. From then on, the nightmares plague him each night, and Keith learns to muffle his sobs with a nearby pillow. Eventually, not even his roommates wake. 

Nothing stops the image of flames from clouding his eyes each time he closes them. He can still feel the heat of the flames on his skin, no matter how many windows he opens to let winter air inside. 

He’d thought he’d repressed the night of his father’s death, but it seemed as if the incident haunted every moment of his life. He couldn’t even nap without his brain transporting him back to the burning ashes of their house. The inescapable memories lived within the scar tissue on his hands, where he’d gripped a searing hot doorknob, screaming for help. 

People told Keith that he was stronger for living with this weight on his shoulders. 

But he didn’t feel strong. In fact, he’d never felt so weak.

* * *

Often times, Keith finds himself following a few of the older children on the street as they search for things to steal: money, food, clothing, _anything_. Despite the funding the orphanage receives from the government, they’re still living in poverty and filth. Of course, things could be worse, but Keith was sick of going to bed cold, dirty, and hungry. 

At the end of any particular day, they regroup outside the home and split what they’ve found. Today, all the kids have found is a lone sock, a half-eaten granola bar, and a lighter. Keith didn't find anything worth salvaging. 

“Where's your contribution, huh?” The eldest boy questions him, stepping closer and squaring up to him with intimidation. “You can't just keep coming up empty handed!”

But as he's speaking, Keith sees him flick the lighter offhandedly, almost like an involuntary habit. 

With a sharp intake of breath, Keith scrambles backwards and finds himself pinned against the wall. The second the boy realizes why Keith’s reacted so harshly, an evil grin appears on his face. He laughs, loud and sickening. “You're afraid of the lighter?”

As Keith's heart rate increases, one of the other boys grabs at them both, attempting to separate them. “Come on, Alex, leave him alone. None of us got anything good today.”

“Oh, but we did,” Alex grins devilishly, yanking his arm away from the other boy and stepping closer to Keith. He brings the lighter in front of Keith's face, flicks it open to reveal the flame. 

Keith screams for five whole minutes until his voice fades. The burns, however, don't fade for five whole weeks.

* * *

“Where’d you get those?” 

Keith stares in horror at his bare forearm, where his sleeve has ridden up to reveal the angry burn marks. His teacher and current tutor, Mrs. Lantiff, is waiting for him to look up, an indecipherable expression on her face. Precarious silence echoes in the empty library as he gazes up at her, cautionary and guarded. Keith had expected anger or pity, two reactions with which he was well acquainted, but she just seemed to be curious – and without forcefully prying. 

Keith appreciates it. So he’s honest. 

And he leaves out a lot of details, mainly just glazing over the facts. He doesn’t make anything up, but his omissions are strategic. He basically just tells her that the orphanage doesn’t punish the kids that continually burn him. 

Mrs. Lantiff curses under her breath, eyes squeezed shut as her expression betrays not pity, not anger, but _sympathy_. For the first time in his life, Keith experiences someone feeling with him, like she’s taking a portion of his suffering. 

“Keith,” she begins and finally looks him in the eye again. The boy half expects her to suggest something irrational, impractical, but instead she just sighs, letting her posture sag with grief. 

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he responds decisively. 

For a minute, it looks like she wants to protest, but she resigns to teaching him about fractions until the bell rings, signaling the end of recess and, consequently, the end of the tutoring session. 

Later, he finds a small slip of paper in his math book. Written on it is a phone number.

* * *

Mrs. Lantiff moves their tutoring to after school, and Keith is grateful for the extra time he doesn’t have to spend at the orphanage.

* * *

Two weeks of biweekly tutoring pass before Keith finds himself with no other choice but to call the number left by his teacher. 

He’d narrowly escaped the grasp of his main bully that night and used the opportunity to escape the awful house as well. He’d attained a punishment early for not making his bed, meaning he’d get no dinner for the night. So in the end, Keith really had no reason to stay in the house if he was just going to be tortured and hungry.

A few hours of wandering around the impoverished streets of his city brought him absolutely nowhere. He was lost. 

When he stumbles upon a payphone, he counts himself lucky that he’d long since memorized Mrs. Lantiff’s phone number. Once he’s scrounged up enough lost change, he dials the number and hopes his luck remains long enough for an answer. 

As the phone rings unanswered in his ear, Keith’s hands begin to shake with desperation. 

He’s convinced he’s going to die alone, cold, and hungry in the streets when Mrs. Lantiff finally picks up. 

“Hello?” Her voice is much less formal than he’s used to, and for a moment, he finds himself paralyzed. What if she gets mad at him for sneaking out? What if she wants to bring him the cops? Then they’d make him go back to that awful place, where he can only imagine the horror that’s waiting for him. But before he can contemplate it too much, her voice interrupts his spiraling thoughts. “Is anyone there?”

His breath hitches, attempting to hide his growing panic. 

“Keith? Is that you?” She asks, tone still wary as she interrogates. Keith can’t find it in himself to respond, only able to let out a muffled noise, between a whine and a plea for help. The woman on the other end lets out a breath. “Okay, Keith, breathe for me, then you need to tell me where you are.”

Keith takes in a few gasping breaths, and his knuckles whiten where he’s holding the phone. His eyes search around the dark streets, looking for something familiar, anything he can identify. Eventually, his gaze settles on a convenience store that he recognizes, finally able to figure out where he is. “Near the hardware shop on Thames Street.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

* * *

And she is. Within ten minutes, Mrs. Lantiff is at his side, covering him in a large jacket and guiding him to her car. She doesn’t say anything, just keeps him tucked under her arm as he trembles and shakes, letting her care for him without hesitation for the first time ever.

When they get in the car, she doesn’t make a move to drive. Her shoulders are tensed, and he knows she’s about to say something he won’t like. 

“I have to take you back.”

Keith sobs. 

He can’t believe he’d trusted her to keep him safe. He can’t believe he even let her into his life. He can’t believe he let his walls down just to be betrayed. He can’t believe she would do this to him, after everything he shared with her in confidence. He can’t believe that she’s bringing him back to what she knows is hell for him. 

But he knows she has no choice.

Still, it doesn’t change that he’s being kicked while he’s down.

* * *

He sports a black eye and a swollen lip for the rest of the week. His thighs are covered in scorch marks.

* * *

In the end, it’s the last nail in his coffin. He stops attending tutoring with Mrs. Lantiff, and eventually, she gives up trying to talk to him. Yet no matter how cold and hostile he is to her, not once does she punish or even reprimand him. He thinks she might feel like she’s doing her penance, that she’s apologizing through action. But Keith just isn’t ready to accept it. She betrayed him. 

Instead of going to tutoring, he wanders around his city, almost hoping that he gets lost, almost hoping he never makes it back to the reality he’s living in. He thinks that maybe, _just maybe_ , he could run away and find something better. But the likelihood of that isn’t promising, so Keith wastes as much time as he possibly can. 

When he eventually returns each night, he can’t sleep, fearful of what torture he might be subjected to if he lets his guard down. This awful habit festers until Keith is terrified of the dark, plagued by the fear so intensely that he stops sleeping altogether.

Which, consequently, is how Keith finds himself asleep in class more often than is socially acceptable. 

Mrs. Lantiff doesn’t send him to the principal’s office. Instead, she tells him to stay back after class to talk. In Keith’s opinion, it’s a thousand times worse of a punishment. Especially when he finds himself standing in front of her desk, subject to her kind gaze and involuntarily ready to forgive her. 

“You know why you’re here,” she begins, voice soft and understanding. Keith just stares at his feet as she talks. “You know it’s unacceptable to sleep through every class. I was going to let it go, but it’s been happening too often to ignore,” she lectures, and Keith resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Do you understand that this behavior cannot continue?”

Keith nods, keeping his head down to avoid looking at her for too long. Because he knows that if he does, her soft expression will make him want to give in, to come crawling back, to get the comfort he wants so badly.

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

He can’t help the way his head snaps up in surprise, appalled that she would even suggest such a thing after what had happen. But as he looks at her, truly _looks_ , he notices that she doesn’t look great either. 

There are bags under her eyes, stark and visible even in the yellow light of the classroom. The next thing he notices is the slump of her shoulders, which contrasts her usual immaculate posture. Keith considers that this situation may be affecting her as much as its hurting him. Which, in theory, is ridiculous since she doesn’t have to suffer like Keith is.

But maybe, like before, she feels for him. Maybe she carries some burden, too. 

“Can you tutor me again?” He asks, quietly, tentative, cautious, because he’s scared of rejection. Truthfully, he doesn’t know why he’s offering such a thing, but he figures that they both benefited before from the tutoring. It seemed to make Mrs. Lantiff less stressed over him, and it kept Keith away from that wretched place. 

It was a logical situation for both of them, Keith rationalizes. 

Her face lights up with a smile, so contagious that Keith can’t help but return it a little.

* * *

New burn marks still litter his arms each day. But Keith is starting to notice the old scars are fading.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to @CharacterCorner for this prompt!! I apologize for taking so long, but I've been quite busy and I wanted to do it right :) I hope you like it!!
> 
> this is also to fill the bingo prompt "kicked while down"  
> [-lily](https://koganewest.tumblr.com)


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